Mikhail Fedyaev, cofounder of coal mining company Sibirskiy Delovoy Souz (SDS), purchased 62% shares of the company from his partner Vladimir Gridin. Given that Mikhail Fedyaev already had 33%, he acquired a majority stake of 95% of the company.
The price of the deal is estimated at 250-500 mio USD. Gridin’s withdrawal from SDS was preceded by the sale of a number of the holding’s assets. In 2015, 74.99% of the railway operator Novotrans, belonging to SDS, was sold to Konstantin Goncharov. In 2016, the manufacturer of nitrogen fertilizers SDS Azot was sold to Roman Trotsenko. His company Novaport also bought Kemerovo airport from SDS.
High debt burden is the main problem of the company. In May 2020, SDS-Ugol, coal-mining subsidiary of the holding, requested state funds support, which involved concessional lending to replenish working capital and granting the loan to refund bank debts. In July 2020, Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yanovsky pointed out that Russian Ministry of Energy provided assistance to the company in negotiations of financing terms with banks.
SDS-Ugol includes Chernigovets, Vostochny (Salek), Pervomaysky open-pit mines, Yuzhnaya and Listvyazhnaya mines, two washing plants.
In 2020, the coal company produced 20.19 mio t of coal (-4.37 mio t or -17.8% to 2019). In 2019, SDS also started construction of the seaport of Sukhodol, located in the Primorsky region of the Far East.
In early August, three owners of the terminal – Port infrastructure development center, owning 24.79% stake, as well as shareholders of SDS Mikhail Fedyaev and Vladimir Gridin (each owning 25.1% of Sukhodol terminal) pledged their shares to VEB.RF and VTB.
In September 2020, Russian Railways subsidiary, RZD Infrastructure projects, owning 25.01% stake in Sukhodol terminal, pledged its share to the Russian state development corporation VEB.RF and VTB Bank (see CAA Russian Coal Weekly dated September 04, 2020). As a result, 100% stake was pledged in accordance with the syndicated loan agreement.
The capacity of the coal terminal is planned to amount to 12 mio t per year in 2022, with a possible increase up to 20 mio t per year. The construction cost of Sukhodol coal terminal was estimated at 35.4 billion RUR (506 mio USD).
Source: CAA Analytics (photo by SDS)
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